The decision follows a complaint by the National Broadcasting Council (KRRiT), Poland’s constitutional broadcasting regulator, which accused TVP management of fraud, involvement in an organized criminal group and unlawfully attempting to influence a constitutional authority.
Piotr Antoni Skiba, spokesman for the Warsaw District Prosecutor’s Office, said prosecutors had concluded that the culture minister’s decisions to dissolve TVP, place it into liquidation and appoint a liquidator were lawful.
The decisions, adopted through resolutions of the broadcaster’s extraordinary general meeting of shareholders, "fell within the bounds of the law," Skiba told Poland's PAP news agency on Monday.
Prosecutors also found that the allegations were based on incorrect interpretations of the legal definitions of the alleged offenses.
The complaint concerned efforts by TVP’s liquidator to recover unpaid installments of public broadcasting license fee revenue.
Prosecutors ruled that these efforts did not constitute a criminal offense.
They rejected allegations that the liquidator had made unlawful threats or attempted to obtain money fraudulently. Instead, they concluded that he had acted in the broadcaster’s interests to recover funds that had been withheld unlawfully and without justification.
The dispute dates to December 2023, when the incoming government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk moved to replace the management of Poland’s public broadcasters, which had faced longstanding accusations of political bias under the previous Law and Justice (PiS) administration.
The culture minister subsequently placed TVP, Polish Radio and the PAP news agency into liquidation, a legal procedure that allowed the organizations to continue operating under new management.
The move sparked a prolonged legal and political dispute over the government's authority to restructure public media.
In April, KRRiT chairwoman Agnieszka Glapiak accused the government of illegally taking control of public broadcasters in December 2023 and maintaining what she described as a fictitious liquidation process.
"The liquidation process has caused irreparable financial, organizational and reputational losses," she said, claiming that public broadcasters had lost hundreds of thousands of viewers and listeners.
Glapiak also called for prosecutors to investigate whether those managing the broadcasters had violated Poland’s constitutional order or unlawfully interfered with the regulator’s activities.
The decision to refuse an investigation is not yet final. KRRiT has rejected the prosecutors’ decision and announced that it will appeal to a court.
KRRiT is Poland’s broadcasting regulator, responsible for licensing radio and television stations, overseeing public broadcasters’ compliance with the law and exercising indirect control over state-owned media
(rt)
Source: PAP